Markup Languages
XML is a language that is used to describe data. This stands in contrast to a language such as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which is a language used to display data. To fully appreciate what XML is and what it does, it is useful to have a baseline understanding of markup languages in general.
What Is a Markup Language?
Markup languages exist to add meaning or formatting to documents. Rich Text Format (RTF) is one example of a markup language. It consists of a defined set of tags or tokens that lend instruction on how to display a piece of a document. Figure 10.1 shows a formatted sentence typed into WordPad.
Figure 10.1. An RTF document in WordPad.
When the document is saved with the RTF format, the following code results: ...
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